stART on the Street 2010

stART on the Street this year had a big family connection. Not only did my mom come to help me man my booth as she usually does, but my dad also came with her and hung out all day at stART. AND my husband's uncle was also a stART vendor for the first time and brought along his wife and his sister (my mother-in-law) as his helpers.


My uncle-in-law and I ended up getting booths next to each other, except we were separated by the second stage. I'm not sure if being next to the performances was a good or bad thing. The music, poetry and performances were awesome. And most of the time loud. So it made it difficult to hear customers at times. But it was awesome. And I dont think that it increased or decreased the number of people who stopped to look a the booth.

The weather was great and so was the crowd. I think here were more people than ever in attendance. This year the stART folks did not sell sidwalk spaces and had the vendor all through the center of the street. It was nice because it pushed the booths further up the road by the park which made it feel more connected to the art in the park event that was also going on at Elm Park. It also left more room for pedestrians.

The food was amazing as usual, with pile of local restuarants serving up some great options. I think my dad sampled a handful of different dishes throughout the course of the day. I was able to enjoy some awesome jamaican jerk chicken, red beand and rice and plantains from One Love, and I also had an awesome smoothie from NuCafe.

As for sales, I did OK at this show, not as good as last year, but better than my first year. For some reason my scarves did not sell this year as I was expecting. Lots of looks but only one sold. I had a number of small sales of things like coffee sleeves, notecards and felted soaps. My last sale was my favorite one - I sold two small pieces of my original paper collages! This was my first sale of my original art in Massachusetts since we moved here, so i was very excited to have someone purchase them! The two pieces that sold were of trees.. "On the Beaten Path" which was one of the first ones I made and "Paper Birches" which is one of the lastest ones I've done (and was just in the Fitchburg Art Museum Show).


StART was awesome, I'm always so grateful to participate in this event and so proud that such an event takes place in my new hometown. It is the highlight of my year, and the start of the craft show season for me. I am going to do a small show in Southbridge in November and then will probably participate in the Clark Curefest Show and StART at the Station in December.

Even though I didnt sell alot of scarves, I am still planning on making at least a dozen or so more of them, along with about 30 more soaps, and a pile of cute ornaments and perhaps a few more yarn wreaths. So I suppose I should log off now and get busy crafting!